“Diamond” by Hygienic Dress League

Hygienic Dress League was born as an idea that over time became a specific project thanks to the passion of the two visual artists Steve and Dorota Coy. The couple, husband and wife in the real life, decides to launch a personal way to do art, able to discuss many aspects of the contemporary society while being committed in building a futuristic and alternative reality.

Hygienic Dress League has been registered as a corporation in 2007. The artists begin to operate in the urban reality of Detroit, a city that offers numerous inputs thanks to its post-industrial views and the strong commercial marketing. A symbol of the corporation thus becomes the pigeon: an animal domesticated by the city, which lives and governs it in some way.

In the urban scene of Detroit two characters appear dressed as businessmen carrying briefcases and wearing gold gas masks. These figureheads of the company become popular especially in the artworks and the murals of street art.

HDL uses different communication mediums. These are unique public interventions ranging from fleeting projections, video holograms, television commercials,public art and murals, site specific installations and more.

The project denounces great contradictions of our society through images that become symbols and keys to reading. As in a book we are given a heading and then given the following chapters, so from the diamond follow a series of concepts and images related to the initial idea. The diamond is an artistic installation that explores the disconnection between consumerism and industry for humanity. The paradox of the theory of value affirms the apparent contradiction that although the water is more useful in terms of survival than diamonds, diamonds have a higher price on the market. This project is a visual manifestation of that valuable interrogation, juxtaposed to a semi-burnt room of an abandoned school building, its installation position. The aesthetic beauty of the installation, the free construction, the intrinsic meaning and the symbolism of a diamond are all committed to revealing deeper truths.